Sometimes you think ‘I’ll just do one last tweet for the road!’ and sometimes you might want to think again.

Justine Sacco, Communications Director at IAC, a big internet and media company, chose to tweet and fly. She was flying from London to South Africa, her native country. As many people soon learned, she fired off a perky tweet.

Going to Africa! Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!

The 12-hour flight to Capetown began, during which she had no Internet access. As Sacco flew, the Twitmosphere began passing her tweet around as an example of raging racism, and cluelessness from a professional PR person.

By the time her plane landed, a lot of people despised her and were enjoying discussing that. The hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet had sprung up. Fake Twitter accounts had been created in her name. Freelance stalkers had examined and reported upon her Twitter history. One guy had figured out what plane she was on and gone to the airport to view and tweet about her arrival. Also she was fired.

IAC had condemned her tweet and announced they had “parted ways.” Gogo, which provides wi-fi in flight, had tried to take advantage of the situation by saying this wouldn’t have gotten out of control this way if her plane had been Gogo-equipped – and then they’d incoherently apologized for getting involved.

@JustineSacco,apologize for response to your tweet.Right or wrong,It’s not our policy to engage on these subjects.We clearly need a review.

Some positive-thinking people, intent on getting lemonade from these lemons, registered JustineSacco.com to take donations for @AidforAfrica. Aid for Africa went along with it. “Let’s Turn a Bad Situation Into Something Good” they proclaimed.

While Sacco’s in the air, let’s pause and ask if that tweet really was a sack of racist classist stupidity. I’ll grant you stupid; look what happened. But was she really saying white people don’t get AIDS, so she doesn’t care about it? Maybe. Maybe it was just a casual me-and-my-first-world-problems gloat.

But I don’t think so. She may have been pointing out that people like her, who have privilege, education, and health care access, are much less vulnerable to HIV. I think she was pointing out the effects of the class difference. Sarcastically. Doing a quick takeoff on racist classist stupidity. As a casual aside.

But 12 words can’t carry much nuance. So it’s hard to be sure.

According to a Twitter-stalker, Sacco was met in Capetown by family members… who seemed to know all about it.

Her Twitter account was promptly deleted. The next day Sacco put out an apology.

Words cannot express how sorry I am, and how necessary it is for me to apologize to the people of South Africa, who I have offended due to a needless and careless tweet. There is an AIDS crisis taking place in this country, that we read about in America, but do not live with or face on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, it is terribly easy to be cavalier about an epidemic that one has never witnessed firsthand.

For being insensitive to this crisis—which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly—and to the millions of people living with the virus, I am ashamed.

This is my father’s country, and I was born here. I cherish my ties to South Africa and my frequent visits, but I am in anguish knowing that my remarks have caused pain to so many people here; my family, friends and fellow South Africans. I am very sorry for the pain I caused.

Totally interesting apology! Good points: she does not make it about her. She doesn’t say “that isn’t the real me.” She takes responsibility. She explains, but not too much.

Bad point: I think it’s a flaw that her apology is to “the people of South Africa.” (Others were offended, too.) It looks to me as if she’s not apologizing to “people living with the virus,” for frivolously dismissing their situation (or appearing to do so). Looks like she’s apologizing to South Africans for embarrassing them – specifically, perhaps, to white South Africans for making them look racist (by association with her). Or maybe to all South Africans for making it look like a country that hasn’t put racism behind it?

Let’s re-write Justine’s tweet. “Going to Africa!” is the best part of her tweet, so keep that. Let’s not be flip about HIV. Um, “Continent ravaged by AIDS.” Now for the point about the unequal impact of the disease. “Must NOT be smug about my protection via white privilege.”

Um, still a tad smug. Add: “Srsly.” Take the high road indicated by those positive-minded lemonade-from-lemons critics. “Donating to AidforAfrica as soon as I land!”

26 words! But still lacks nuance. Could be Twitter’s not the best medium for this.

In fact, what a great plot device for a novel or screenplay – the things that happen while a character is trapped on a plane, or even worse, TRAPPED ON A PLANE WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA. It is of course a tragedy.